


The Subsurface is Seething

by whatsacleverusername



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alliteration, Angst, Bloom is a creepy bastard, Body Horror, Gen, One Shot, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Plant Analogies, Psychological Horror, Symbolism, Writing Exercise, i guess?, it makes more sense if you read it, lots of plant analogies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsacleverusername/pseuds/whatsacleverusername
Summary: I wanted to fix up my writing vocabulary, and very few people make content for Mr. Bloom in general, so. Here's something like him recruiting someone before his attack on Gotham I guess.
Kudos: 4





	The Subsurface is Seething

_[You awake in one of the foreclosed subway tunnels the city has yet to destroy. A convenient, reliable shelter, far away from the stigma and hostility of the more fortunate folks and those irritable, without a home like you. You never did understand why this area was always empty, but you don’t care. You relish the solitude. However, as you roll over in your makeshift bed of cardboard and newspaper, it seems the answer has invited itself in unwelcomed anyway; crouching low, impossibly long limbs carrying it in a lurching sort of locomotion, a faceless thing creeps towards you, the odd flower- like one massive eye- being its only visible feature. You’re too bewildered by what you see to be scared, until its claw seizes your leg, suddenly pulling you towards it with force you’re sure must have dislocated the joint. You scream, but find a cold, pale hand clamped over your mouth before it can even open. You hear no breathing but your own shallow pants, you feel no pulse but your own terrified heartbeat. There is no movement but your own momentary struggle against its grasp. It seems like an eternity before it lets you go, sitting crosslegged before you with its head cocked to one side. You want to scream, you want to flee this damned tunnel and never look back, but you find yourself frozen as you stare at the floral eye gazing back. It’s clothed like a man, you realize, all in black over its sickly pale flesh. Boots, jeans, a shirt neatly tucked… Fishnets over its arms and neck? It gives you no time to consider the odd attire, suddenly speaking in a voice hardly above a whisper, but sharp and ringing in the silence, a slight accent in its inflection. You cannot tell whether its voice is male or female, though something tells you it does not matter. Its words are more important.]_

The subsurface is seething. It is undulating in its thorny unrest. The Garden’s soil has been nourished- flooded- _engorged_ on the crimson ill-secretions of the streetside children, yet the lovely flowers care not as they trot along the bloodied paths of murder, poverty, and neglect. They only care for their prettied petals, their decorative dew drops, their crudely carved hunks of metal machinery hurtling them to places they don’t need to be to impress people they’d love nothing more than to _maim beyond function and recognition_. From the elegant tulips to the lovely roses, the delicate orchid to the pure daisy, they care not for the cadavers of history they tread upon so long as they take them to their doleful, dull destinations. They pay no heed to the passing weed, dirtied by his home in a hole in the ground, watching them from the cracks in the sidewalk, his face no more than a passing stone in this Garden they all yearn to control. No, they _ignore_ him, though his eyes reflect and glow like the streetlamps in the darkness. But he watches. And he observes. And he makes his _own_ conclusions, untouched by the pretentious posh of the poppies and pansies. He persists even after attempted annihilation, creeping up through their cracked civilization and carving his freedom from the stonework laid down to keep him penned. He is she, she is they, they are we. _I_ am we. _I know_.

…Like all the others, I’m sure you’ve wondered what’s below the fabric shrouding my features from the scrutiny of the Garden. No no, don’t be shy. I don’t mind. You are as curious as you are human. _What could it be_ , you ask. Could I be hideously grotesque and gaunt? You never assume beauty to be hidden and masked. Could I have horrendous teeth sprouting from my face like thorny growths? A seeping, drooling maw taking up most of my skull? Eyes decorating my skin like cancerous, pussy tumours? Perhaps I have no skin at all. Perhaps I am nothing but pulsating veins and twitching muscles below this vacant visage. You always expect horror to lie in hiding. In your defense, this expectation _rarely_ disappoints. The danger is in the darkness, after all. The horrible monsters that go bump in the night, after all the lovely flowers shut their eyes for the nightly affair with death that is sleep. It’s such a _tease_ to be dead then awake once more. For a weed cannot die. _This one_ can’t, at least. _You_ , friend, on the other hand, and the graceful, royal, _putrid_ , _**filthy**_ flowers… They cannot survive. They _will not_.

We aren’t so different, you and I. We are both the weeds. The undesirables. The next sanguinary stone in these streets of the subdued and subjugated. Though we need not _neglect_ ourselves of our freedoms. _I don’t_. Wouldn’t you like to tear the flowers from their soft soil and give them a taste of the Garden proper? Bring them to our own level while we rise to theirs? A level less _lacking_ of livability for life. More of a median meadow. It would take some work, yes, but wouldn’t it be worth it? To put them in their place? Hm… _Here_ \- I can see you’re on the fence, friend. I’ll leave this with you. Think it over. I’ll know what you decide.

_[With that sickening movement like a wood carving half come to life, it rises from its seat before you and backtracks, stretching unnaturally to enter a grimy air duct within the wall. The last you see of it is that horrendous, staring flower disappearing into the dark. Once it does, you feel as if you’ve just come out of a trance, shaking your head and pressing a hand to the side of it… Only for something solid to sit between your palm and temple. Lowering your hand to look, you find a seed shaped thing resting their, no doubt left behind by… Whatever that abomination was. An abomination with disturbingly appealing ideals… You look up at the air duct again, its cover fixed back in place in a farce of innocence, contemplating the words that ran down your spine like the cold chills of winter. And you place the seed in your shirt pocket. It will know your decision. You feel like it will know it before you do. You feel like it already knows.]_


End file.
